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A good investment to require and use. Portable to move around the house or office.

The Specifications.

A4 Personal Laminator. This has a Loading Pouch entry for easy loading with a wide front to insert your work and the rear entry that has an easy access and slides through. A ready neon light (green) an on/off switch. Also an easy user guide to get started.

About The Product.

I brought this laminator about 2 years ago and quite honestly has been an ideal item to have around the home. Having a look around websites and shops for price and specifications. Well eventually looked in my favorite shop the works and found what I was looking for The laminator.

The color is black and stylish also compact and durable. This product is well made. Having looked at other laminators they where quite pricey. We paid £12.99 quite a reasonable price.

When used for the first time smelled slightly, but that was OK this is new. By pressing the on switch, this made a slight humming noise to say that it was working. Touching the top of the machine slightly hot.

When ready a little green neon light will appear. This is on the right side of the machine. Putting the paper into the laminator pouch and feed through the laminator, but make sure the sides are even when you put this through otherwise this could buckle up.

The machine comes with a self explanatory easy guide of how to use explains everything. A very easy and functional machine you can use for your office or creative hobbies such as card making. Tidy up documents that want covering. This machine is very versatile to have at hand.

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Sturdy kit for the home - just another piece of technology to marvel over!

Laminating isn't a common house hold sort of job. Some people laminate quite frequently, usually for work related reasons, whilst others require sheets to me laminated only a couple of times a year. We use our Texet LMA4-V to laminate important documents we need to keep for a long time, and for the kids, we laminate drawings and games they have made. What's great about this sort of 'personal laminator' is its simplicity and its ease of use that comes as a result.

The LMA4 laminates up to size A4 - so that includes A5 and all other paper sizes before it (down to credit card size). The width of the machine at its in-end is slightly greater than A4 (about 236 mm) so that the device can laminate around the edges of the page (by about 2-10 mm - dependant on the size of the plastic sheeting you buy). You must buy the plastic sheeting separately, this is where the main expense is absorbed. The stuff can be expensive and should be bought on bulk! There are many producers, and can buy the stuff in all the standard sizes so as not to waste material.

A limiting factor is the lack of any tray to hold pages before entry, or to catch them on exit. The machine offers a hand-on approach in which the user must guide pages through manually, with use of the machines slow moving rotor which grips and tugs the pages through. Only one page can be laminated at a time, and the laminating speed is roughly 25 cm per minute - a snails pace if you're wanting to do a heap of pages in one afternoons session.

The quality of the end result is very good for such a small, simple device. The heated element within the housing of the laminator puts out just the right amount of heat energy to successfully glue the plastic to the page. This means you can cut into the page (around drawings, shapes, etc) and the plastic will remain secured on either side. There is a warm up period of around 2-4 minutes which must be respected for the end result to be as impressive as can be.

I have had no reliability issues with the device, and although made from a cheap feeling plastic, it seems to be very well built, sturdy and durable on contact. With the switch of a switch the thing will turn on and begin heating up - it really is as simple as that to use. I am very pleased with the device and would recommend it to anyone with a bit of laminating to do - NOT SUITABLE FOR AN OFFICE ENVIRONMENT.

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Arnold Swartzawoshisname is 'The laminator'... only this time it's hotter

When you've got a piece of paper, or even a precious photograph, that needs to be protected from greasy fingers and, in the case of kitchen papers, food spillage, then there's nothing more useful than a gadget that can cover the said piece of paper in a protective casing, yet still leaving what ever is on the paper so that it can be seen.So, to get that protective wrapping the boffins came up with something called a laminator, which is a machine that uses heat, together with a slow moving motion, to protect that precious piece of paper.

There are several types of laminators on the market these days, some costing so much money that you'd need a friendly chat with the bank manager in order to own one, whilst others are basic and affordable yet do the job that they are supposed to do. And it's one of the 'less expensive' laminators that I have had the pleasure of using for a while now, with this particular one being called the Texet LMA4-V.

Firstly, I have to mention a bit about Texet just in case, like me before I bought this product, you've never heard of the company.Apparently, "Texet bring art and science together to create cutting edge gadgets with an innovative twist". (this statement is taken from their website).

The company is based in Manchester, UK, and was established in 1970, being part of a group called Hira. They sell computer accessories at what they call, 'cheap prices', which to be honest, after checking their site and comparing some prices against other sites, their cheap price promise is not a total lie.The goods they sell range from small micro-SD cards to larger things such as tablets and even digital photo frames, (one of which I am looking at buying quite soon).

But enough about the company itself, let me take you back to the product that opened my eyes to Texet, the laminator itself.

This one is made of a sturdy black plastic casing which encases the heated workings that are needed to 'melt' the plastic pouches. It has a switch on the front which is the on/off button that you need to press in order to get the machine heating up. Then there's a little light on the top that tells you when the machine is on and at the right heat.

There are grooves on the top which let out a bit of heat, so don't be putting your hands on the tops of this when it's on. But these groves look more for show than anything else, but they do seem to give this one a bit of a stylish look to it, with the added curves that surround them.It's a cracking little size as well, being about 330mm long by 118mm wide and 90mm in height, weighing in at a light 1.3kg, so that it can sit on a desk or table without taking up too much room. Then, when it's cooled down, it slots away in it's box and back into a cupboard.

The input slot, or entry, or even the mouth, is about 240mm wide, which is wide enough for an A4 sheet to go in. it can actually take several pouch sizes, from credit card size, being 54 x 86mm to the largest size, that being A4, which is 216 x 303mm.The technical bits are that the minimum micron laminate thickness is 100 (2x50), with the maximum being 160 (2x80) microns.

The mains lead is about a metre long so that it's not too close to the mains socket when it's on, therefore there's no worries about this heating up the plug itself, which could lead to a very dangerous situation indeed.

As for actually using it, this is so simple, being a matter of placing your paper into the open pouch, with edge of the paper pushed up to the already sealed side of the pouch, trying the get the paper as close to the middle as you can.Then, once the machine has hit the right temperature, with the indicator light letting you know when this has happened, you simply place the pouch, sealed side first, into the mouth of the machine, letting the movement of the mouth's 'wheels' slowly drag the pouch into it.Once the laminator has the pouch firmly in its grip you can then let go of the pouch and allow the machine to send it right through, slowly excreting the firmly sealed paper at the rear.

My Opinion...

I have used this many many times indeed, laminating everything that I can get through the mouth without damaging anything. I've put protective covering around pictures, sheets of important notes and even recipes that I like to dabble at in the kitchen sometimes. Once this machine has done it's job, laminating the paper or pictures, then they are protected for ever against such things as oil, water, slops of food and what ever else you can through at it, simply wiping off anything without damaging the paper inside the melted plastic pouches.

It's a good speed, and it takes about four minutes to actually get to the required temperature to do the job properly, but once it's come to heat it can laminate an A4 piece in less than a minute, (although the instruction leaflet claims it runs at 25cm per minute), It's as quiet as a mouse, (where ever that saying came from), making only a slight humming noise when the machine is working, dragging, nay, gently pulling the laminate covered paper through the slot in the front, gently rolling it out of the back slot, encasing the paper in a clear and protected wrapping.

So what does this little paper protector actually cost then..?It sells in many good retailers, and some not so good ones as well, for around the £20.00 region; which, for what it offers and the way it easily protects your precious papers with a plastic sleeve, is good value for money in my eyes.

The pouches themselves, the plastic that you put you paper into and then send through this laminator, vary in price, ranging from a couple of quid to several quid, depending on where you get them from.I tend to get mine from the local pound plus shop, buying a pack of ten for £1.50, as they work just as well as the more expensive ones.

In all; if you want to protect paper in a clear, tough plastic casing then a laminator it the way to go, and this one is well worth having on your desk as it's a good price and offers just as good a finish as any other, more expensive types.

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A simple and cheap laminator although you would think it would cost a lot more

Being on placement within a school I felt that it was almost expected of me to have a laminator in my home to make resources for the children. After deciding to create a small jigsaw for the children I then approached to arduous task of looking at the huge market of laminators that are available. I made my decision purely on the size of the box and how light- weight it felt..........choosing the Texet A4 Laminator Black LMA4-V from Tesco at £20.39.

Upon getting my laminator home it was an easy set up, so much it was simply plug in and play (and play I did, lots of nice coasters were made to match the colour scheme of my living room) I found it took a little while to heat up at first but each time I use it, the speed of getting to the correct heat seems to speed up a little. I also found that unlike other laminators I have seen on the market there is no temperature control which helps for use of thicker paper/cardboard.

The product comes with a free pack of laminating pouches as well which was helpful as I forgot to buy some, I now buy the Tesco A4 Laminating pouches which work well with the product. The final flaw (well not a flaw just a notice) is that the maximum size is an A4 sheet of paper, which I knew but others reading this may not know.

I have had this laminator now for around a month and used it every couple of days (trust me, laminating is very addictive) and it still works very well, however the plastic does get very hot on top so a warning if you have children and leave it on.

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a good purchase for us

There are some things you buy and, having got them home, you think to yourself "why on earth didn't I buy one of these before?", that's got to be the case with this laminator which, since its purchase a few months ago has proved to be more useful than we ever thought it would be. It's currently on offer at Rymans for £19.99, as it was when we bought it, and comes (in a very non-descript box) with a trimmer and 50 laminate pouches of varying sizes from business card to A5 right through to A4.

If you don't know what a laminator for some reason - it's a device for heating up plastic pouches and sealing them around paper or card, this will protect them by encasing them in plastic. This particular laminator is of A4 size - it's just a bit wider than a normal piece of A4 paper and takes 80micron pouches - which I think are the thinnest, cheapest pouches you can buy. There's not much to the laminator really, it's got an on/off switch and a green diode - when you switch the device on after about 5 minutes this will light up to show you that you are good to go. There are rollers inside the machine which make the pouch with your paper in pass through the slot out to the other side, these make a gentle hum so that you know that it is on.

In Use:

It's simple to operate the laminator, it does get quite hot, for obvious reasons, and we do take care when using it around the children and make sure we unplug it after use and put it well out of reach. This is a cheap item and it does show in some ways, such as the length of the cord, but actually it does what it is designed to do more or less perfectly and is fairly well made. We have found that the laminator is ideal for protecting special photos and recipes from magazines as well as for more creative purposes, such as transforming the kids' pictures into table mats or bookmarks and making wipe clean reward charts too. If you are trying to laminate thinner items you do need to place the pouch on a special laminator card or it will concertina up - these are available from Rymans at a reasonable cost and I was advised by the salesperson to buy some at time of purchase.

I find that using this I can laminate lego instructions with ease, and this gives them good protection, when we first got this we did go a little laminate crazy - (luckily we found that A4 refill pouches are widely available and not expensive) but months on though our plastic frenzy is over this is still a gadget that it's good to have which gets regular use. You can laminate anything as long as it isn't over A4 size of course, and not too thick, from the smallest piece of paper upwards. All the edges are well sealed and the rollers seem to be good enough that there are no air bubbles or other issues.

Accessories:

The laminator, as mentioned earlier, comes with a trimmer (you can see this on the ryman's site), it's a poorer and more flimsy version of the "guillotine" I use at work. It does have a measuring part and 3 changeable blades, one straight and two sort of wavy ones, but to be honest it's not a great bit of kit. You can trim things fairly successfully - we've used it to make our bookmarks and a board game, but would probably be better off using scissors or a craft knife as it all feels a bit like it might fall apart whilst you are using it. If you are a serious crafter you are probably going to want a better made trimmer in all honesty, and though we do use the trimmer I could definitely live without it, hence the 4 stars for what is otherwise a 5 star item as far as I am concerned.

Overall:

As I said at the start, I am really pleased with this item, given that it comes as a whole pack I think that it is excellent value. I do believe that you can buy the same laminator on its own should you wish to avoid ownership of the trimmer. This is a good item that does what it is designed for well; on that basis I am happy to recommend it - just don't get carried away and try laminating the cat!